


introspection, texting a best friend & some old demonic anxiety

by girl412



Series: assigned ineffable at birth [7]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Gender things, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Non-Linear Narrative, Other, Post-Canon, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Texting, They/Them Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens), i saw someone use the david tennant cinematic universe tag and might've been unduly influenced by it, what are all the official trans tags ... this one's pretty trans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21596248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl412/pseuds/girl412
Summary: Warlock gets home and texts his best friend.Aziraphale and Crowley talk about Warlock and about the future.Warlock may just have embarked on a journey of self-discovery.Everything's tickety-boo, though!
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Warlock Dowling, Warlock Dowling & Original Female Character(s)
Series: assigned ineffable at birth [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1469717
Comments: 29
Kudos: 273





	introspection, texting a best friend & some old demonic anxiety

**Author's Note:**

> so far this has been the most challenging chapter to write. i can only hope that i pulled it off, lmao. 
> 
> me, while writing this: "does it make sense for crowley to swap pronouns in the middle of the day?"  
> me, realising that i'd spent half the day preferring one set of pronouns and the other half preferring another set: "uhsjfhkfj okAY" 
> 
> also: remember how sally & warlock saved their numbers in each other's phones under the other person's name, because the texting is pretty confusing otherwise. all messages sent by "sally krieger" are actually sent by warlock dowling, and vice versa.

When Warlock gets home, he says hello to his mother. She asks him how the day has been, and he begins to tell her, but he can tell that she’s stopped listening by the second sentence he has to say. He knows better than to be surprised by this, so he just opens the fridge and grabs a glass of cold milk and makes his way upstairs, to his room.

-

Crowley’s quiet during dinner, more than usual. Usually, they let Aziraphale talk, and watch him eat contemplatively, but today they seem distracted, somewhere else altogether. Careful not to startle his partner, Aziraphale reaches out and gently puts his arm on Crowley’s elbow. Crowley starts anyway, slouch straightening up ever so minutely.

“Is everything alright, my dear?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley blinks in such a way that Aziraphale is intuitively aware of it, dark glasses be damned.

“Just thinking,” Crowley says. Aziraphale notes that the answer isn’t a yes.

-

Sitting on his bed, Warlock finally pulls his phone out and notices he’s got a new text from “warlock dowling **🍄** ”. Smirking, he messages Sally, telling her that he’s had a great day and that they went out for lunch and then went to the arcade and that his Nanny is just as cool and wonderful as he’d remembered. Sally responds virtually immediately, telling him she’s happy for him, and they find themselves texting easily, as if they’ve been friends all their lives. Sally is easy to talk to, Warlock thinks, as he messages her about why he doesn’t like dinosaurs, and she agrees with his points while also offering constructive criticism. Sally just _gets_ it.

-

“He’s a good kid,” Crowley explains. “No, scratch that, Angel, he’s a _great kid._ The best kid. We had a lot of fun today.”

“What’s bothering you, then?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley shrugs, a full-bodied thing that serves as more proof that the Serpent of Eden is, whatever body they inhabit, still a serpent at the crux of it.

“He was unhappy to go back,” Crowley says eventually, almost reluctantly. Softly, they continue, “He’s generally not happy with his parents. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise to us, I mean. We know how the Dowlings are.”

Aziraphale hums in agreement, reaches out across the table and takes Crowley’s hands in his. “Yes,” he says. “You’re certainly on the money about that.”

-

Sally messages Warlock to tell him that she’s going for dinner, but they can continue talking over text whenever she gets back. He says okay, and he puts his phone on the table. He pulls his socks off, and sits there for a minute, thinking. Then, on an impulse, confident in the knowledge that Sally isn’t going to respond to him just then because she’s eating, he messages her, _“this might be a bit random, but do you believe in magic?_ ”

Then he lies down on the bed, still in his outdoor clothes, and he stares at the ceiling, processing. Trying to put into words the way he’d felt, pretending to be Sally.

-

“I wish we could adopt him,” Crowley admits. This obvious admittance of niceness seems to be a bit too much for them, though, because they immediately take a gulp of their coffee, possibly just for something to do. They then steal a bite of food off Aziraphale’s plate.

Aziraphale just stares at them fondly. “Me too, Crowley,” he admits. For Aziraphale, this is a big confession. He isn’t in the habit of being open when it comes to opinions that might be classed as defiant; old habits dying hard and all that, but now is clearly an exception. “I’m inclined to agree with you entirely there. But are you sure it would be wise?”

“How do you mean?” Crowley frowns. “If you’re talking about us as parents, we’re both undeniably better suited for the job than his current lot.”

Aziraphale nods, and then makes a frustrated face. “That’s not the question, my dear. You’re right, of course. I just meant, we’re both supernatural entities, and neither of us is on very good terms with… certain other supernatural entities.”

“Are you saying that we wouldn’t be good guardians because we got fired?”

“Hush, you.” Aziraphale gives Crowley a fond but exasperated look. “There’s nothing I would like more than for us to adopt him, that is, assuming that he wants it as well. My fear is only that we might endanger the boy further, by virtue of who we are.”

“Angel, that’s absurd,” Crowley says, but there’s creases of a familiar frown developing on their forehead.

“Is it?” Aziraphale asks softly. “Would it be so absurd to imagine Hastur wanting some form of revenge over what happened to Ligur, and since it’s established that he cannot harm you, him hurting Warlock instead? To get to you?”

Crowley’s frown becomes more pronounced.

“It’s not a no, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, kindly. “We mustn’t be hasty is all.”

Crowley sighs, slouches enough that their posture resembles a question mark.

“We’ve got to consider it seriously is all,” Aziraphale says, as gently as he can.

“Angel, I know,” Crowley murmurs. “Believe me, I _know._ ”

_-_

Different people had responded differently to Warlock pretending to be Sally, but one instance is clearer and suddenly more pressing than the others, in Warlock’s mind.

A middle-aged lady hadn’t noticed anything off about the switch, Warlock remembers. She’d looked at him and said something appreciating the picture, but Warlock remembers the way she’d called him a talented girl, with absolute surety. As if there was nothing else he could’ve been. Warlock Dowling, 14 years old, talented girl. And he was aware that maybe he should’ve been uncomfortable, or felt awkward at that, but he hadn’t. In fact, he’d felt good about it, even.

He’d been attributing it to the fact that a compliment was a compliment, regardless of whatever else, but there was definitely something more to it, something he’d never let himself think about for too long, or consider too seriously. There was the fact that Warlock had wondered, sometimes, how it would feel for people to look at him and see someone who wasn’t a boy. And, on someone addressing him with the assumption that he was a girl… he had his answer, to some degree. It felt right. It felt better than he’d dared hope. When she’d said it, something inside him had felt warm.

He opens his laptop, and begins to type into Google. He knows that there are help pages and support websites for transgender and nonbinary people, because he’d heard about them online. He hasn’t ever gone looking for them before, though. At least, not before now.

His phone glows with a message from Sally.

-

Crowley and Aziraphale walk out of the restaurant. Aziraphale loops his arm around Crowley’s waist, and Crowley doesn’t stop him. Crowley calls a taxi using their phone, and they stand by the sidewalk and wait.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” Aziraphale murmurs. “That was not my intention.”

There would have been a time when Crowley would have tensed, and said something self-desecrating along the lines of, “Yeah, I know, too fast as usual?” but a lot can change in two years. Sometimes, if there’s sincerity on both ends, enough even to fix anything that’s been spiralling for millennia, or at least, put a spanner in the works of it.

“I know, Angel,” Crowley says instead. “I’m not upset with you.”

“Oh?”

“It’s just unfair, you know. That we still don’t get to catch a break.”

Aziraphale puts a hand on Crowley’s cheek and leans in, chastely kissing the side of their mouth.

“Someone I love very much told me that Alpha Centuri is beautiful this time of the year,” Aziraphale says.

“You bastard,” Crowley says, delighted.

Aziraphale infers an unsaid “I love you” from Crowley’s tone, and smiles.

When the taxi arrives, the mood is much lighter.

-

Warlock reads Sally’s message, and then, replies.

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : Idk if I can say yes or no tbh. I mean I’ve always felt like it’s one of those things you need to experience to believe in

**sally krieger** **🐛** : what if i told u that my nanny is magic

**sally krieger** **🐛** : like, literal magic

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : I doubt you have any incentive to lie to me so I’m gonna believe you on this one

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : plus they sorta had this vibe you know? Like a “don’t mess with my kid” vibe

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : damn maternal kind of thing. maternal in an agender way???

**sally krieger** **🐛** : oh yeah i got crowley to agree abt being my mother

**sally krieger** **🐛** : it is a fact. crowley is more my mother than my actual mother

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : LOL vALID

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : ok but also, also, also, listennnn

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : your nanny had this energy. like I told you, the vibe, but more than that…they seemed like they could kick your ass if they wanted. and not just that

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : like, Kilgrave from Jessica Jones? except minus the creepiness

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : I mean, they seemed like they had the energy to melt minds

**sally krieger** **🐛** : crowley is NOTHING like kilgrave omg

**sally krieger** **🐛** : there are so many better examples of people with superpowers that you could’ve given

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : like whom, the Hulk?

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : ok jokes aside. Crowley = very cool, Kilgrave = scum of the earth, but also

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : don’t you think Crowley looks a little like David Tennant??

**sally krieger** **🐛** : i tell u that my nanny is supernatural

**sally krieger** **🐛** : and instead of like, making mary poppins references

**sally krieger** **🐛** : you compare my nanny to david tennant?

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : on a purely aesthetic level

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : it’s not a bad thing

**sally krieger** **🐛** : why on EARTH are u like this.

**sally krieger** **🐛** : i love u but, and i cannot stress this enuf, wtf

**warlock dowling** **🍄** : ;))))))

-

Crowley and Aziraphale enter the hotel, and Aziraphale walks over to the room service leaflet, wondering if he can sneakily order Crowley’s favourite red without the demon noticing.

“Give me a minute, Angel,” Crowley says, sounding vaguely exhausted. “I need to get something from my flat.”

For supernatural entities, even those in human corporations, transport and travel are only ever as difficult as they personally believe in. Crowley transports themself to their flat easily enough, and they walk over to their bookshelf. They pull out large books that look not unlike law students’ study material. All of the books contain information relevant to the current day’s legal scenario, despite having been bought a few decades ago. No possession of Crowley’s would dare to go out of style, after all.

When Crowley returns to the hotel room, they’re greeted by a perplexed but supportive Aziraphale, who’s standing there observing with one eyebrow quirked up.

“We don’t need human law, technically,” Aziraphale reminds them.

Crowley hums, and flips over to the section on Adoption. “I know. It’s just something to do, to calm me.”

Aziraphale hums. “In that case,” he says, vowing to put the bottle of red in the fridge, for Crowley, whenever they want, “I’ll make some tea.”

-

Sally eventually says goodnight, since she has an assignment to complete as part of an online course she’s taking.

Left to his own devices again, Warlock looks through his photo gallery, coming to rest on the photo Sally’d taken of him standing in front of her picture, smiling widely as if he was the real artist. There’s something about the way he’s standing in that picture that feels different than usual pictures of him. He’s almost glowing.

Warlock things about it, about being a girl, once again. Suddenly feeling something that could either be nervousness or excitement, he opens his text messages and sends a message off to Crowley.

-

Crowley’s phone buzzes. They pick it up and open the notification. It’s Warlock, whose contact name pops up as “hellspawn,” mostly because Crowley had joked about changing it and Warlock had demanded that Crowley act on their joke.

The text message in itself is ambiguous and there isn’t much to infer from its tone. Warlock wants to talk to Crowley about something that’s not exactly bothering him, but that he’s finding a little confusing and overwhelming. At the same time, the message is as reassuring as possible in its wording. Warlock doesn’t want Crowley to worry.

Crowley worries anyway, and shoots off a message asking if Warlock wants to talk over text, or over the phone, or whether the situation warrants some teleportation and hanging out in person immediately.

Warlock responds quickly, telling Crowley that maybe it’d be better in person, but that it’s not such a big deal that they need to drop everything and come immediately.

Maybe it’s Aziraphale’s worst-case-scenario talk about Hastur, or maybe it’s something else, but Crowley’s nervous in a way that will not quiet down, and they really want to check on Warlock.

They don’t need to, though, because almost immediately, they get an incoming call from “Hellspawn.”

-

“I just, realised I’m not doing a very good job of this, over text,” Warlock says softly, into the phone. “And I really didn’t want you to worry, I just. I need your advice, and your insight, and just. There’s something I’m trying really hard to understand.”

“Of course, my darling,” Crowley says, something in their voice tense but at the same time, more relaxed than it’d been a few seconds ago. “We’re experts on all things human, Aziraphale and me.”

Warlock makes an incredulous choking noise. “You’re both just plain _weird._ But yeah. I think you could help me with something.”

Crowley hums in agreement.

“Do you think we could talk tomorrow morning?” Warlock asks. “Just us? Not that I don’t want to talk to Aziraphale, I’m just. Going through something that I think you have personal experience with.”

“It’s nothing bad though, is it?” Crowley asks.

“No,” Warlock says. It’s flattering, how much Crowley cares, but Warlock wishes his demonic Nanny weren’t so worried. “No, it’s not bad at all.”

“Right,” Crowley says. They sound a little exhausted, and Warlock finds himself suddenly afraid that he’s overtaxing his primary caretaker.

“Are you alright?” he asks, as gently as he knows how to. Something he’d learnt from Aziraphale, the time they’d rescued an earthworm and the gardener had spoken compassionately to the worm, as if that was enough to fix all damage. And maybe it is, in Warlock’s experience. Love doesn’t ever make things worse.

“Just a little paranoid,” Crowley says, almost bitterly. It’s not quite bitter; Crowley would never take that tone around Warlock, but it’s very close to it.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Warlock says, reading their tone for what it is. “If anything ever goes wrong, I’ll tell you. I’m fine, and I’m okay. I just need to talk to someone about things, and you know how my parents are.”

Crowley sighs. “Yeah.”

They’re both silent for a minute. “Thank you, little hellspawn,” Crowley says eventually.

“Of course, Nanny,” Warlock says.

“So, tomorrow. Instead of me and Aziraphale meeting you, do you want me to meet you somewhere, we go get ice-cream again and talk about whatever it is you want to talk about, and then we meet Aziraphale for lunch? Would that work?”

“Uh, yeah,” Warlock says. “That sounds perfect.”

There’s a voice on the other end, muffled and indistinct, but somehow Warlock hears it perfectly clearly.

“Crowley? Is everything dandy?”

“Just a sec, Warlock,” Crowley says, and then, their voice is muffled, not spoken directly into the phone receiver, “Everything’s tickety-boo, Angel!”

“Tickety-boo?” Warlock asks.

“You’ve just got to make fun of the people you love,” Crowley explains. “Oh no, Angel, don’t scowl at me like that. You know how I meant it.”

There’s a mumble of something that sounds like “Wily old Serpent.”

Warlock smiles, something inside him feeling inexplicably warm and fond.

“Tell Aziraphale I said hello,” Warlock says. “I’ve got to go now, I haven’t eaten dinner yet.”

“It’s almost nine, hellspawn!” Crowley exclaims. “For the love of – somebody. Don’t stay hungry!”

“Yes, Mum,” Warlock says, and Crowley makes one of their weird incoherent surprised noises.

Warlock knows, somehow, without needing to see their face, that they’re smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> if the entire "warlock isn't cis" thing seems too sudden....... i've been planning it from the beginning, and it's very subtly hinted at in one of the last paragraphs of the very first installment of this series. the reason it didn't feature earlier is mostly just diversity of transgender/nonbinary experience. a lot of people know that they're trans ever since they're very young children. some others, like warlock in this story (and like me, even though it took me 19 years to get where i am and not 14) don't always identify as trans/nonbinary, or don't realise that it could apply to them, until an incident or a series of incidents leads to a whole gender revelation. i gave warlock a moment of gender euphoria as opposed to like. the dysphoria I Felt that forced me to sit up and question my gender for reals. 
> 
> just wanted to throw that in for transparency's sake, and in the hope that if anybody's ???? at this installment, hopefully that answers it?
> 
> as always. hmu wherever, tumblr (botanicallycrowley), twitter (gothzabini), comments box, etc etc. love y'all very much.


End file.
